Frances M. Kamm, PhD
Harvard University
Kennedy School of Government
Rubenstein - 108
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-384-9808
Email: frances_kamm@ksg.harvard.edu
Assistant: Camiliakumari Wankaner (617-495-5994)

Frances Kamm is the Lucius Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

Professor Kamm specializes in normative ethical theory and problems in practical ethics related to medicine and law. She has received a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Association of University Women, Columbia Law School, the Harvard Program in Ethics and the Professions, the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Institutes of Health. She is a member of the editorial boards of Philosophy & Public Affairs, Utilitas, and Legal Theory, and the advisory board of Routledge International Library of Philosophy.

Ongoing Research

Aspects of nonconsequentialist ethical theory, rights, bioethics, war and morality.

Select Publications

Creation and Abortion (Oxford, 1992), Morality, Mortality, vols. I and II (Oxford, 1993, 1996), "Supererogation and Obligation," (Journal of Philosophy, 1985), "Harming Some to Save Others," (Philosophical Studies, 1989), "Nonconsequentialism, the Person as an End-In-Itself and the Significance of Status," (Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1992), "Inviolability," (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1995), "Abortion and the Value of Life: A Discussion of Life’s Dominion," (Columbia Law Review, 1995), "A Right to Choose Death?" (Boston Review, 1997), "Moral Intuitions, Cognitive Psychology and the Harming/Not Aiding Distinction", (Ethics, 1998), "Responsibility and Collaboration," (Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1999), "The Doctrine of Triple Effect and Why a Rational Agent Need Not Intend the Means to His End," (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2000)

Recent Journals, Chapters, and Editorials

Kamm, F., "Rescuing Ivan Ilych: How We Live and How We Die" Ethics, January 2003, 113:2, 202-233.

Kamm, F., "Whether to Discontinue Nonfutile Use of a Scarce Resource," chapter in Rationing Sanity: Ethical Issues in Managed Mental Health Care, Nelson, J.L., Georgetown, 2003.

Kamm, F., "Deciding Whom to Help, Health-Adjusted Life Years, and Disabilities," chapter in Public Health, Ethics, and Equity, Anand, S., et al (eds.), Oxford, 2004.

Kamm, F., "Failures of Just War Theory," Ethics, July 2004, 114-4, 650-692.

Kamm, F., "Ronald Dworkin on Abortion and Assisted Suicide," chapter in Dworkin and His Critics, Burley, J. (ed.), Blackwell Publishing, 2004.